This application is based upon and claims the benefit of priority from the prior Japanese Patent Application No. 2000-163793, filed May 31, 2000, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wearable type life support apparatus for measuring and determining various states of a user by using a wearable device and giving life support by an information service such as medical administration or personal navigation according to the user""s situation, a life support method, and an advertisement providing method.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the society becomes complex, stress in daily life is said to be one factor of various problems of the modern society because stress adversely affects the health of people by, e.g., causing life-style related diseases such as heart diseases or mental diseases such as depression, and also triggers crimes.
xe2x80x9cStressxe2x80x9d originally means stimuli from the external world (Yoshinosuke Tadai, xe2x80x9cWhat is Stress?xe2x80x9d, Kodansha Bluebacks). Currently, xe2x80x9cstressxe2x80x9d is taken to also include adaptive reaction against stress. When the adaptive reaction exceeds human limitations, various diseases or mental disorders are said to occur. Alternatively, these disorders occur presumably when the sympathetic nerve and the parasympathetic nerve become unbalanced due to a change in rhythm of life.
How to cope with stress is important for the people of this day. The best measure against stress is stress control, i.e., to eliminate stress. Various methods are recommended to this end: xe2x80x9cto see or listen to images or music that prompts relaxationxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cto do anything one likesxe2x80x9d, and xe2x80x9cto shout loudlyxe2x80x9d.
However, a person who is pressed with business every day is often unconscious of the buildup of stress. He/she is heavily fatigued, and in the worst case, comes to a sudden death. It is therefore important to realize and control stress before it becomes serious or prevent stress from building up.
As the importance of measures against stress is recognized, development of apparatuses for acquiring vital information of a user and measuring and managing user""s stress is an urgent necessity. Several apparatuses have already been proposed.
However, since a person experiences stress in a variety of situations in daily life, the vital information to be measured largely changes depending on external situations such as the peripheral environment and the position of the person as well as internal situations such as action and mental condition. For this reason, it is difficult to accurately grasp user""s stress state unless the vital information is analyzed and determined in association with user""s behavior.
To make the user realize stress, he/she must be notified when or immediately after stress builds up. Otherwise, the user cannot be aware of stress, and if the user is unaware of the stress, life style and the like can hardly be improved.
Hence, demand has arisen for the development of a system which can determine the stress situation in daily life and notify a user of it so as to assist stress control.
For stress control, it is important in terms of care to provide the user an optimum measure to cope with the situation. However, such a technique is still absent.
For portable type information communication devices such as handyphones, ringing tones or conversing voice at a public place as in a train poses a problem. To solve this problem, a technique of setting a vibrator call mode as a xe2x80x9cmannerxe2x80x9d mode or receiving a message by an automatic answering telephone function is already widely used. However, since urgent contact is sometimes required, a mechanism capable of easily communicating a situation or message without voice communication is required.
In the world of the Internet, advertisement display (banner advertisement) according to the Internet use situation of a user, such as Internet advertisement, is widely used. However, information providing according to each scene of user""s daily life and business that uses the information providing service for advertisement have not been realized yet.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a life support apparatus and method which can determine the stress situation in daily life and notify a user of it to cause the user to realize the stress or can support the user of a method of eliminating stress or care against the factor that has caused the stress, on the basis of the situation of the user.
The present invention provides a system which can grasp the situation of a user by various sensors, grasp the degree of stress corresponding to each situation, and offers a service such as occasional life style improvement or relaxation using the concept of a wearable computer always attached to the user. In addition, the system is applied to consumer marketing or advertisement display business.
According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a life support apparatus comprising a vital information sensor attached to a body to acquire vital information of a user, a behavior information sensor attached to the body to acquire behavior information of the user, a situation recognition device which recognizes a user""s situation based on the behavior information acquired by the behavior information sensor and the vital information acquired by the vital information sensor to generate user""s situation information, a data base which stores stress management information are prepared in advance, an information search device which searches the data base for stress management information corresponding to the user""s situation information, and an information presentation device which presents the stress management information obtained by the information search device to the user.
According to this arrangement, the vital information and behavior information of the user are acquired, the user""s situation is recognized on the basis of the acquired behavior information, corresponding information is obtained from pieces of information for dealing with stress, which are prepared in advance, using the acquired user""s situation information as a key, and the obtained information is presented to the user.
The stress situation is determined in daily life, and optimum service information for stress elimination or care is provided to the user in accordance with the situation, thereby enabling life advice contributing to user""s healthcare.
According to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided a life support apparatus comprising a user information sensor attached to a body to acquire information representing a user""s situation, a situation recognition device which recognizes the user""s situation based on user information acquired by the user information sensor, a transceiver device which transmits the information of the user""s situation recognized by the situation recognition device and receive external information transmitted from an external apparatus, and a presentation device which presents the external information received by the transceiver device to the user, the external information including an advertisement appropriate for the user, which is sent from the external apparatus in correspondence with the user""s situation information.
According to this arrangement, information representing the physical situation of the user is acquired, the user""s situation is recognized on the basis of the acquired information, and advertisement information corresponding to the information of the recognized user""s situation can be obtained from the server that hold various kinds of advertisement information corresponding to physical situations and presented to the user.
The stress situation is determined in daily life, optimum service information for stress elimination or care is provided to the user in accordance with the situation in consideration of the time and circumstances, and the user is prompted to use the service, thereby enabling life advice contributing to the commercial effect and user""s healthcare.
According to a third aspect of the present invention, there is provided a life support apparatus comprising various kinds of information presentation media for a voice or text message, a user information sensor attached to a body to acquire user information representing a user""s situation, a situation recognition device which recognizes the user""s situation based on user information acquired by the user information sensor to generate user""s situation information, a communication device connected to the situation recognition device and communicating with external equipment, a situation information conversion device which selects an optimum message presentation medium from the information presentation media in accordance with the user""s situation information and convert the situation information into a form corresponding to the optimum message presentation medium, to present call message information sent from the message sender and received by the communication device to the user, and an answer transmission device which transmits the user""s situation information converted by the situation information conversion device to the message sender.
In this arrangement, upon reception of incoming message information addressed to the user, the call message is converted into a form that uses an appropriate medium corresponding to the user""s situation recognized by the situation recognition device, and presented. The answer transmission device transmits the user""s situation information converted by the situation information conversion device to the message sender.
The user""s current situation is determined in daily life to cope with an incoming call in accordance with the user""s situation at that time in consideration of specific time and circumstances such that the user need not worry about it, thereby enabling life advice without imposing any stress on the user.
According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, there is provided an advertisement information providing method comprising preparing a server which holds various kinds of advertisement information corresponding to physical situations, and extracting optimum advertisement information corresponding to a situation of a user to present the optimum advertisement information to the user.
According to the present invention, the server which hold various kinds of advertisement information corresponding to physical situations is prepared, the physical situation of the user is detected, and optimum advertisement information is obtained from the server in correspondence with the user""s situation and presented to the user.
The user""s current situation is determined in daily life, and advertisement information such as optimum merchandise to deal with stress can be presented to the user on the basis of the determination result in consideration of the user""s situation at that time. This contributes to user""s stress care and healthcare, and commercially effective advertisements can be provided.